


Thirty-two Short Stories about Hawkins, IN

by Yeomanrand



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Brief appearance by Mike & Dustin, Brief appearance by Nancy's Dad, High School, Jonathan's Camera, Minor canon divergence, Multi, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Semi-Omniscient, Pre-Slash, Pre-Threesome, Steve's Baseball Bat, Vignettes, only if you read the epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: Snapshots of Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan's lives post-series.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ships_to_sail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/gifts).



Steve Harrington, every hair in place as always, takes Nancy Wheeler to the batting cages for practice, though she elbows him off when he wraps his arms around her to show her the right way to hold a bat. Jonathan Byers, focusing in with his camera through the mesh of the fence, laughs. The sound isn't unkind.

When Nancy hits the first three balls straight over the "second baseman's" head, Steve shuts his mouth hard enough his teeth clack and moves over to his own cage. He hadn't realized _he_ was going to have to practice to keep up.

Outside the cages, Jonathan watches the two of them through his eyes and the lens of his new camera, and reminds himself people will think what they like. He doesn't know who the three of them are, yet. Friends, maybe. 

A wartime term drifts up from his subconscious. Comrades-in-arms.

"Come on, Steve," Nancy shouts, to the muted crack of a foul tip. "Hey batter batter. You swing like my mom!"

Jonathan feels his smile broaden, and he wishes for just a moment he could have brought the video camera along.

\------

It's Saturday afternoon, and Jonathan is in the Byers' kitchen popping up some Jiffy-pop over a burner. Steve is on the floor in the living room making sure the VHS player is properly hooked up and giving him shit about being a tech whiz who can't even connect a simple piece of equipment. Jonathan tosses a handful of popcorn at him, and Steve's still picking it out of his hair when Nancy knocks on the door, movie selections in hand.

"I can't leave you alone?" she asks, setting the plastic bag down by Steve and picking one last piece of popcorn loose and tossing it into the open trashcan. The boys share a look and shrug, and Jonathan tosses a few pieces of popcorn her way, as well.

"I'll be cleaning up anyway," he says, and she snorts, unladylike, before dropping down onto the couch; she leaves room to either side.

"What did you bring?" Steve opens the bag. 

"I don't need to tell you if you're just going to _look_ ," Nancy answers; Jonathan settles down on her right with the popcorn and three bottles of pop.

"Blade Runner," Steve reads, "Excellent. Something Wicked This Way Comes...what's that?"

"Read a book," Nancy and Jonathan say together, and Steve bats away the pillow tossed his direction. 

"Okay, okay. And, uh." Steve squints at the third movie. "Paint Your Wagon? What the hell is this?"

He sets the double-box down on top of the others and looks at Nancy. She gives him a little, but toothy, smile.

"We're going to start with that one," she says, leaving the couch long enough to open the box and stick the tape in. "Clint Eastwood sings."

\------

Nancy comes out of a dead sleep halfway out of the cuddle-pile on the Byers' couch; both Jonathan and Steve reaching sleepily to hold her back. She falls into their arms; they close her up between them, hands strong and not shy on each others' backs.

Just for Nancy, they lie to each other with a silent locking of eyes over the top of her head. Because they can guess what she was dreaming: four-lobed mouths filled with teeth, Will Byers' pain, and Barb; the dark things and The Upside Down.

They know because sometimes they dream in blood and grey and smoke, too, and rise out of dreams like screaming.

\------

The next morning, they go out to the woods and take turns destroying a rotted log with Steve's nail-studded baseball bat. But they don't talk.

They don't need to.

\------

"We need to talk," Nancy says, hands on her hips and glaring at Steve and Jonathan. They look nervously at each other, then back at Nancy. She can feel the incredulous pinch between her eyebrows; she's not going to spell things out here, in the narrow alley between the indoor basketball court and the boys' locker room. 

Nancy looks at patient Steve and steadfast Jonathan and remembers what Murray said. She thinks how right and wrong he'd been about her relationships with both the idiots in front of her. 

But Steve hadn't been with them. So she supposes she should give that particular ass a break.

\------

Steve and Nancy look through the contact sheets to pick out their favorites of the shots Jonathan took of the two of them in the batting cages, and some Steve took of Jonathan and Nancy laughing on campus earlier in the day, for Jonathan to blow up and frame for his mom.

The Byers need something pleasant to hang on their walls, for a change. 

———

They end up having The Conversation in Castle Byers because they're sure Will's asleep, because it's half-past one in the morning, and because Jonathan and Steve checked on him.

Also, Jonathan hid a baby monitor in Will's room and he has the receiver in his pocket. Just in case.

There isn't a lot of room for three nearly-adult teens, especially when two of them are tall. So they're all sitting, their knees touching even though both Jonathan and Steve keep shifting to try and make just a little space between them.

"Will you two stop it?" Nancy says, reaching out to set one hand on each of their knees. They look at each other, then at her.

"This is _exactly_ why we need to talk," she says, "and what we need to talk about. Man up. I promise if either of you has cooties, you both do."

Both Steve and Jonathan blush in the dim light provided by the flashlights already lost among the bedding.

"Come on, Nance," Steve says. "This is ridiculous."

"Is it? I love both of you." 

She pauses, shocked for a moment at her own willingness to let the words out. Jonathan and Steve are as surprised, if Jonathan's frown and Steve's parted lips are anything to go by.

Steve recovers first.

"You said —"

"I know what I said," she interrupts. "I was angry and hurt and you weren't taking me seriously."

"And you were drunk," Jonathan supplies, helpfully. Nancy glares for a minute, but then sighs and takes her hands off their knees. 

"And I was drunk. And it was gross, the whole thing, and I don't want it to happen again. But that's not the point."

She rolls her eyes and takes a deep breath, lower lip twisting for just a moment.

"I said it. And I said it because...Paint Your Wagon."

Confusion on Steve's face fits like a well-loved jacket; on Jonathan's it looks awkward but no less appealing.

_Boys_ , Nancy thinks, and quotes, "'Why can't a woman have two husbands?' Or boyfriends, anyway. I'm not ready to get married. 

"But, if the two of you can stand it."

The silence when she finishes feels thick and full of invisible ash catching on their eyelashes before Steve breaks it by pushing to his feet, hitting his head on the low ceiling of the makeshift castle.

"Ow! No way. That's not — I can't." he says, ducking to exit the sheet serving as a door. Jonathan shifts his weight, prepared to follow him, but Nancy hasn't so much as twitched. He settles back down, looks up to check for damage.

Nancy shines the flashlight where Steve's head hit; the beam reveals nothing but wood.

"Probably not going to see anything but gel anyway," she says, voice thin and whispery. "His head's pretty well protected."

Jonathan doesn't manage a smile any more than she does, but he nods.

"What about you?" she asks, fingers tangled in the hem of her skirt.

"I don't know," he says. "I need to think."

Nancy nods. She's slower to her feet and out into the woods, and gives Jonathan a little wave before she lets the sheet fall back in place.

Jonathan shuts off the flashlight and stays tucked in the castle in the dark for a little while longer. He'd thought there couldn't be anything more frightening than twice losing his little brother to the lurking things.

——-

Steve avoids them at school for the next few weeks, like the aftermath of Lisa's Hallowe'en party. Jonathan doesn't cling to Nancy, he never does, but she feels him around like ghosts and whispers. A rumor she can't shake.

She carefully doesn't think about the possibility one will say "yes," and the other "no."

——-

True to form, it's Steve who comes around with an answer first. She's talking with Mike and Dustin outside by the bike racks when she feels him at her back.

"Hey, Steve," Dustin says, and they're all spared an awkward conversation when the rest of the party appears. Nancy turns around to watch Steve watching the party ride away, and finds she can't help her smile.

He looks at her face, catches it, and shrugs. 

"Shitty boyfriend, damn good babysitter," he reminds her. She laughs. 

"It's good to know yourself," she says. "They've been through a lot."

"So have we," he says, with a little shrug.

"Dustin told me you gave him hair care tips."

Steve groans. "I'll murder the little bastard myself. I swore him to secrecy!"

"Maybe instead of college you should go to beauty school," she teases, and Steve wrinkles his nose at her before looking around to make sure they're mostly alone.

"About what you said," he starts, and then takes a deep uncertain breath. "I mean. I wouldn't have to _kiss_ him, would I?"

Nancy straightens up, brows drawing together and the corner of her mouth rising. 

"I hadn't thought about that part. I guess you could, if you wanted to. Like, I wouldn't object."

Steve groans and rubs his forehead.

"That's not—"

Nancy sets her hand on his arm. "I know. You wouldn't _have_ to. Pardner and Rumson didn't. I'm just saying maybe don't rule it out."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay we can try this — us — the three of us. Figure it out. If Jonathan will. But I can't promise I won't get jealous sometimes."

Nancy keeps her voice down despite the bubble of lightness in her chest. 

"If you two decide you _do_ want to kiss, I can't promise I won't be, either."

——-

Jonathan stops by Nancy's that night, after supper, with a prepared excuse about homework despite their lack of shared classes. He can see Nancy trying to hide the slight tremble in her hands, the shifting of her slight frame. They head up the stairs; Nancy rolls her eyes at her father's injunction to "leave the door open."

But she does, just a crack, when all is said and done. 

Jonathan roams around the confines of her small room; it's not the first time he's been here but he still feels out of place. 

Nancy sits down on the bed, waits for him to perch beside her.

"He said yes?" Jonathan asks.

Nancy tilts her head, a sort of sideways nod. "He said 'okay.'"

"Steve."

"Yeah."

Jonathan takes one of her hands in his. 

"I'm in."

Nancy leans in until her head can rest on his shoulder.

——-

The next time they fall asleep on the couch during movie night, Steve and Jonathan's joined hands are a comfortable uncomfortable knot hidden beneath Nancy's hip.


	2. Epilogue

"I could still stay," Steve says. Nancy and Jonathan roll their eyes at him. 

"You could. You shouldn't. We may come back here when all is said and done, but I want to see more than just here. Jonathan still wants to go to school in New York."

"You know she's right. She's smarter than both of us."

Steve snorts; Jonathan and Nancy tackle him backward onto his bed, laughing. 

"Okay, okay," he says, holding his hands up in surrender. "Fine. I'll go learn something."

"That'll be a first," Nancy says, eyes dancing. Jonathan snickers into the comforter. Steve groans.

"Get off me for a second," he says. "I have something for you."

"I thought you should be getting gifts," Nancy says, shifting so Steve can get up. She and Jonathan also sit up, and Nancy settles cross-legged on the bed while Jonathan leans back on his elbows.

And both of them still when Steve turns around with the nail-studded bat in his hands.

"Here," he says, handing it to Nancy. "Keep it. Use it, if you have to."

"Wow," she says, glancing at Jonathan then back at Steve. She bites back the first teasing thing that came to mind. "Thanks."

He grimaces. "I know we all hope you don't need it."

"Why?"

"Because I've seen you, steady as hell with a gun in your hands. Because I know you won't crack if you _do_ need to use it."

He turns to Jonathan. 

"I don't have anything for you. Just...be the anchor, like you always have been. For Nancy. For me."

Jonathan stands first, Nancy a half beat behind him. They embrace Steve from either side.

And maybe there is kissing. They'll never tell.

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to my beta and to ships_to_sail for the prompts! I hope you like your gift!


End file.
